It's the 2009 presidential election in Iran and opposition
leader Mir-Houssein Mousavi declares victory hours before the
polls close, insuring that any result to the contrary will be
called into question. Western media goes into overdrive,
fighting with each other to see who can offer the most
hyperbolic denunciation of the vote and President Ahmadenijad's
apparent victory (BBC wins by publishing bald-faced lies about
the supposed popular uprising which it is later forced to
retract). On June 13th, 30000 "tweets" begin to flood Twitter
with live updates from Iran, most written in English and
provided by a handful of newly-registered users with identical
profile photos. The Jerusalem Post writes a story about the Iran
Twitter phenomenon a few hours after it starts (and who says
Mossad isn't staying up to date with new media?). Now, YouTube
is providing a "Breaking News" link at the top of every page
linking to the latest footage of the Iranian protests (all shot
in high def, no less). Welcome to Destabilization 2.0, the
latest version of a program that the western powers have been
running for decades in order to overthrow foreign,
democratically elected governments that don't yield to the whims
of western governments and multinational corporations.

Ironically, Iran was also the birthplace of the original CIA
program for destabilizing a foreign government. Think of it as
Destabilization 1.0: It's 1953 and democratically-elected
Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh is following through on his
election promises to nationalize industry for the Iranian
people, including the oil industry of Iran which was then
controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The CIA is sent
into the country to bring an end to Mossadegh's government. They
begin a campaign of terror, staging bombings and attacks on
Muslim targets in order to blame them on nationalist, secular
Mossadegh. They foster and fund an anti-Mossadegh campaign
amongst the radical Islamist elements in the country. Finally,
they back the revolution that brings their favoured puppet, the
Shah, into power. Within months, their mission had been
accomplished: they had removed a democratically elected leader
who threatened to build up an independent, secular Persian
nation and replaced him with a repressive tyrant whose secret
police would brutally suppress all opposition. The campaign was
a success and the lead CIA agent wrote an after-action report
describing the operation in glowing terms. The pattern was to be
repeated time and time again in country after country (in
Guatemala in 1954, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in Serbia in the
1990s), but these operations leave the agency open to exposure.
What was needed was a different plan, one where the western
political and financial interests puppeteering the revolution
would be more difficult to implicate in the overthrow.

Enter Destabilization 1.1. This version of the destabilization
program is less messy, offering plausible deniability for the
western powers who are overthrowing a foreign government. It
starts when the IMF moves in to offer a bribe to a tinpot
dictator in a third world country. He gets 10% in exchange for
taking out an exorbitant loan for an infrastructure project that
the country can't afford. When the country inevitably defaults
on the loan payments, the IMF begins to take over, imposing a
restructuring program that eventually results in the full scale
looting of the country's resources for western business
interests. This program, too, was run in country after country,
from Jamaica to Myanmar, from Chile to Zimbabwe. The source code
for this program was revealed in 2001, however, when former
World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz went public about the
scam. More detail was added in 2004 by the publication of John
Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which revealed the
extent to which front companies and complicit corporations
aided, abetted and facilitated the economic plundering and
overthrow of foreign governments. Although still an effective
technique for overthrowing foreign nations, the fact that this
particular scam had been exposed meant that the architects of
global geopolitics would have to find a new way to get rid of
foreign, democratically elected governments.

Destabilization 1.2 involves seemingly disinterested, democracy
promoting NGOs with feelgood names like the Open Society
Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for
Democracy. They fund, train, support and mobilize opposition
movements in countries that have been targeted for
destabilization, often during elections and usually organized
around an identifiable color. These "color revolutions" sprang
up in the past decade and have so far successfully destabilized
the governments of the Ukraine, Lebanon, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan,
among others. These revolutions bear the imprint of billionaire
finance oligarch George Soros. The hidden hand of western powers
behind these color revolutions has threatened their
effectiveness in recent years, however, with an anti-Soros
movement having arisen in Georgia and with the recent Moldovan
"grape revolution" having come to naught (much to the chagrin of
Soros-funded OSI's Evgeny Morozov).

Now we arrive at Destabilization 2.0, really not much more than
a slight tweak of Destabilization 1.2. The only thing different
is that now Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media
are being employed to amplify the effect of (and the impression
of) internal protests. Once again, Soros henchman Evgeny Morozov
is extolling the virtues of the new Tehran Twitter revolution
and the New York Times is writing journalistic hymns to the
power of internet new media...when it serves western imperial
interests. We are being asked to believe that this latest
version of the very (very) old program of U.S. corporate
imperialism is the real deal. While there is no doubt that the
regime of Ahmadenijad is reprehensible and the feelings of many
of the young protestors in Iran are genuine, you will forgive me
for quesyioning the motives behind the monolithic media support
for the overthrow of Iran's government and the installation of
Mir-Houssein "Butcher of Beirut" Mousavi.